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Comment by no_wizard | Hacker News Reader

I agree with what Biden was trying to do and the last part about the thrashing and lack of long term focus.

However I don’t think it’s the electorate that wants it now the same way a petulant child wants a toy. It’s the lack of clear vision and support that makes the electorate so desperate for it to happen. If we were to actually reinvest in our citizenry (meaning the wealthy in this country would need to pay a little more in taxes) and have proper support for people in the meantime the public would be supportive and it would be better for the country as a whole.

Instead it seems the US is trying to inch its way to becoming some type of modern Game of Thrones

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> It’s the lack of clear vision and support that makes the electorate so desperate for it to happen. If we were to actually reinvest in our citizenry (meaning the wealthy in this country would need to pay a little more in taxes) and have proper support for people in the meantime the public would be supportive and it would be better for the country as a whole.

What does this look like? Progressive taxes go up, better safety nets, those are straightforward. What does a solid middle class look like when all the cheap labor manufacturing comes back to automation (~8% of US jobs are manufacturing).

The US service sector is almost 80% of the economy. We are walking into perpetual labor shortages due to structural demographics. So perhaps we don’t need “good, union jobs” and instead need to make sure people are paid enough to live comfortable lives, regardless of job (services, manufacturing, whatever). Some combination of universal healthcare (squeeze out the profit potential, cram down non care costs), public housing (see how Austria does it) to prevent investor capture, increasing the minimum wage further faster, etc.

One can argue that the high level of unionization in the 1950s at around a third of the workforce help set an expectation for job compensation. Kind of a “herd-immunity” against low pay.

Maybe it’s not union jobs as you point out, but I agree that there’s a real cost of living crisis where minimum wage jobs are simply too far from a reasonable (not even comfortable) existence.

The public wouldn't be supportive because they have no idea what is going on or how politics is connected to any of it.

For instance, they don't know who was president in 2020, and everyone thought "the economy" was bad for the last four years at the same time as they answered surveys saying they personally were doing great.

See:

https://minnesotareformer.com/2024/02/16/will-stancil-repeti...

https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-median-voter

Statistics can hide or not capture a lot too. That’s the thing we should be talking about and not enough people looked at hard enough.

Stancil isn’t wrong per se, he’s quite right in many respects but I don’t know that his work captures the many facets of what is (and was at the time) going on

It's not a statistical problem. Economic statistics like that aren't complicated indirect calculations, they literally just call people up and ask how they're doing.

I saw one argument that people didn't like high interest rates, but if everyone is saying they are doing fine but have heard other imaginary people are doing badly, that most likely means they've picked up bad vibes from the media.

> everyone thought "the economy" was bad for the last four years at the same time as they answered surveys saying they personally were doing great

Most of HN would rationally answer a survey that way. High paid tech job, flexible hours, good benefits. But also informed enough to know that many others are struggling and financially insecure.

Depending on how the questions were asked, even a person barely getting by might respond that they were personally doing OK (employed, insured, able to pay rent and groceries) while knowing that the economic situation for their friends, family, neighbors was rough and knowing that if they got laid off tomorrow that they'd struggle to find an equivalent replacement job.

What you said is always true, and was /less/ true during that period (because unemployment was down), so it doesn't make sense that people answered this way more often. They were just wrong.

And we all suffer for it.

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